Quote of the Day: If Gun Laws Didn’t Work, We Wouldn’t Have Them

“Conroy said there should be an argument for stricter laws to make it harder for criminal, dangerous, and unstable people to get guns. ‘Laws work, if they didn’t work we wouldn’t have them,’ Conroy said. ‘People just need to start talking about how to get there.’” CeaseFirePA Director Rob Conroy in ‘Talking Together About Guns’ sparks discussion on gun violence, survivors of violence share stories [via collegian.psu.edu]

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Vin Conroy please explain to me why the cities with the highest gun control are the most violent? I’ll tell you why sir it’s because gun control does not work. Laws are only followed by the law abiding. Criminals by it’s definition says a criminal is someone who does not follow law and Order a law breaker. So basically you’re going to get absolutely no criminals to follow gun control laws they’ll get their firearms off the black market. And continue on with these illegal firearms in their illegal hands to begin with because they don’t pass a background check because they buy the firearm it illegally off the streets. Your argument for more gun control is completely ludicrous and is statistically incorrect.

While you’re correct in principle, let’s not be like the antis and make general statements omitting inconvenient truths. Philadelphia, that jewel of my home state of PA, is one of the most violent cities in the nation. Yes, CLEOs in and around Philly tend to throw up as much of a roadblock to a concealed carry permit as possible, and you can’t OC within the city limits (state law, not city), but besides the mandatory 45-day wait and higher charge for CC permits in and around the City of Brotherly Love, Philly residents still enjoy the same liberal (original meaning of the word) gun laws as the rest of the Commonwealth.

New York, by contrast, has a relatively low murder rate. Do I believe this disparity is due to the gun laws of either state? Not at all. I haven’t done enough research to say for sure, but my gut tells me it’s a combination of geography and demographics.

The point is, we have to make sure we’re Right, instead of just sounding good.

The definition of a criminal is a little more nuanced than just whether someone has broken the law.

It isn’t that a criminal is someone who doesn’t follow the law. It’s that a criminal is someone who has evaluated, albeit informally and intuitively, the expected consequences of breaking the law and has determined that doing so is in his best interest.

That’s an important distinction because it recognizes that criminals don’t just break laws because they are laws, but rather that how the law and its consequences are structured can influence someone’s decision to violate the law. Consequences are the price tag for breaking the law.

Criminals are not necessarily people who will pay any price. Nor is it that a criminal breaks the law and automatically incurs the full consequences. You don’t pick a crime off the shelf, then go to tge register to pay for your crime.

There’s a probability associated with him even being investigated, and another of him being prosecuted. There’s another probability of him being convicted and yet others of him receiving a given sentence and serving whatever percentages of that sentence. Then there is the time factor of how long all this takes.

Taken together, a criminal has a whole lot of estimating to do and by the time he’s done, he will have discounted by these numerous factors the worst case scenario all the way down to tge most likely scenario. That discounted “price” might be a bargain, and so hr commits the crime, or it might still be steep, so he doesn’t commit the crime.

Of course, many criminals are stupid (average I.Q.s around 80 to 90), or they lack impulse control, so they get the esitimates wrong and act seemingly irrationally. Still, there is an estimation process undertaken. Adjusting laws and the totality of the probabilities of their consequences (penalties being just one element) can influence criminal behavior.

He’s right. What he’s not saying is what the laws are intended to do. While gun control laws do not accomplish what their supporters publicly claim, the do indeed accomplish an ever more comprehensive limit on our liberty and the tendency of the bulk of Americans to be complacent and dependent on govt for everything.

There are also no illegal drugs anywhere in the country. If there’s a law prohibiting it, I’m sure no illegal product or service exists, by his logic. He must be an ivy league college professor to have reached that level of stupid.

He’s right. They work to marginalize and arbitrarily restrict the social mobility of large numbers of the population. They work to keep new and growing business ventures from competing with established corporate monoliths. They work to manipulate the value of personal property. They work great to establish a buffer samurai class which insulates the upper class from the clashes which occur among the lower and no-as-lower classes. They work to funnel wealth up from the poorest working people into the vaults of the bankers, politicians and corporate elite.

Laws work great otherwise we wouldn’t have them. He just failed to clarify what it is they work so well at accomplishing. Keeping criminals from harming other people? Not so much. Maintaining the established order of elites and plebes? Absolutely.

Law don’t prevent people from doing things, they allow us a means to punish people for doing things. The law against murder doesn’t stop some one from murdering it only allows us to punish the murderer for his actions. Therefore there are two kinds of law those that codify things that are inherently wrong (murder, rape, theft) and those that some one decided to make wrong (not paying taxes, zoning laws, possession of certain items)

If gun laws did work, then a-holes like you wouldn’t be suggesting new ones.

The evil (D) wherever you find them create cesspools with residents who don’t wish to sample any way out. Those on drugs sometimes turn to violence which the evil POS (D) point to as a reason to need gun-grabbing, but it’s a globo-communist scheme.

Here we go again.91% of people agree on background checks bs..Anti gun people loves to be misleading..The 1st thing i’d like to ask him is exactly where did this 91 % come from?Surely it’s not 91% of everyone in the US.

If he were correct, then he would be proposing repeal of gun control laws, since they can be proven to not work. Instead, he proposes more laws which don’t work. Doofuses like this you could not even imagine, if they did not stand up and wave.

Mr Conroy, I would like to invite you to Chicago’s south side. Very strict gun control laws. I would like to see you say that exact same statement after being there for a few days. See if you can say it with even a shred dignity after you find out how wrong you are.

No words have, or ever will, restrain evil men. That requires actions. If this was not so, then there would never have been any need for police. The words on some paper somewhere would be all that would be required. But we all know how foolish that concept is. Even the idiot above. That’s why he is so careful to avoid wording it this way.

Ceasefire huh? They operate in Chiraq…great job buddy! I HAVE been in every freaking neighborhood in Chicago and I can assure you they need no new laws. Pickup the usual suspects and arm the good folks. Oh let the po-leece(warts and all) do their job…

There are laws, then there is the enforcement of the laws. Then is the delivery of punishment:

“Chicago seems to have a lack of willingness to prosecution crime. In 2012, Former NYPD Deputy Commissioner John Miller told CBS News, “In Chicago, you’ve got a 50-50 chance that you’re not going to do any jail time…(and)…33 percent of those cases are dismissed outright” (Reynolds, 2013). Miller’s statements may not be too far off from reality.

When it comes to prosecuting crimes committed with firearms, Chicago ranked eighty out of eighty-seven regions in 2011. Los Angeles ranked eighty-third, and San Francisco ranked dead last at eighty-seven – the lowest prosecution rate for gun-related crimes (Syracuse University, 2011). As of June 2015, Syracuse University noted there were only forty-eight weapons convictions in the Northern District of Illinois which includes both Chicago and Rockford, Illinois (Ballotpedia, 2014). Gun control seems to be Chicago’s focus.”
“One of the problems in Chicago is that there is a lack of prison housing. Even if convicted of a gun-related crime, there just isn’t enough room to house the current 10,000 inmates. As a result, felons get reduced sentences and are back out on the streets to re-offend the public again (Reynolds, 2013)…,

Laws do “work.” They get the vast majority of people to either not do a thing or do a thing. What laws don’t do is prevent a person who was going to break a different law, with an already stiff penalty, from breaking that law.

X is illegal. In order to do X, one must first do Y. We have an X problem. If no one did Y, we wouldn’t have an X problem. Let’s pass a law making Y illegal. People are still Xing, We clearly need more laws. In this situation, the people advocating a law against Y are either stupid or are liars who want to prohibit Y regardless of related activity.

The reason behind gun laws is an ideological one. Why else would laws be passed that restrict the rights of 300,000,000 people every day based on the illegal actions of 100,000 criminals over the past 50 years?

OK, lets use your starting point…. it’s not the best place to start but it’s what you started with so let’s think it out…..

It is illegal to kill someone without cause.

What other law is needed beyond that? You don’t need an additional law for knives because it isn’t the stabbing part that is illegal, it is the killing part.

What other law is needed beyond that? You don’t need an additional law for guns because it isn’t the shooting part that is illegal, it is the killing part.

If you use your starting premise of Laws working then we really only need a couple of laws so let’s run with your idea and start repealing all these unnecessary and repetitive laws all across this country.